Galileo's second flyby of Europa, the smallest of Jupiter's Galilean satellites, occured on 20 February 1997 at 17:03 UTC. At that time, Galileo came about 587 km from the surface of Europa (or about 1.4 Europa radii from its center). As measured to the center of Europa, this is nearly 340 times closer than Voyager 1 came in 1979 and about 95 times closer than Voyager 2 did later that same year. This is also about 16% closer than the altitude which Galileo came to Europa on 19 December 1996. During this time, observations were also made of the Jovian magnetosphere as well as of the other satellites of Jupiter.
The following timeline is a list of different events which will occur beginning with the official start of the Europa 6 (the number actually refers to the Galileo orbit number) encounter and proceding until the last data from the encounter are played back. The times are given in Universal Time (UTC) of the event at the spacecraft.
Date/Time Instrument Event
________ __________ _____
17 Feb 00:00 Start of Europa 6 encounter
00:15 Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 20
21:43 SSI First Io monitoring observation
18 Feb 08:34 UVS/EUV Real-time Jupiter aurora observation
19 Feb 00:55 UVS Jupiter auroral map
02:31 SSI First belt zone observation
23:01 SSI Thebe imaging
20 Feb 12:03 NIMS Europa Terra Incognito observation
12:04 Io closest approach (401,000 km)
16:05 NIMS Europa Arigope Linea observation
16:36 F&P Europa Alfven wing recording
17:03 PPR Europa high-resolution closest approach observation
Start Earth occultation by Europa
Europa closest approach (2,150 km)
17:04 Start solar occultation by Europa
17:16 End Earth occultation by Europa
17:17 End solar occultation by Europa
20:53 Jupiter closest approach (652,000 km)
21:06 F&P Jupiter magnetic equator recording
21:55 SSI Amalthea imaging
21 Feb 01:23 SSI Europa global color map
10:04 NIMS Last belt zone observation
10:56 SSI Last Io monitoring observation
16:26 Ganymede closest approach (318,000 km)
22 Feb 22:55 Callisto closest approach (279,000 km)
23 Feb 01:30 Start playback
24 Feb 04:00 Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 21
25 Feb 11:47 Science turn (solar occultation)
13:27 Start solar occultation by Jupiter
15:33 NIMS Jupiter rings observation
26 Feb 00:44 Turn to return to Earth point
01:15 End solar occultation by Jupiter
03:00 F&P End Europa 6 real-time survey
19:13 Start Earth occultation by Jupiter
27 Feb 08:38 End Earth occultation by Jupiter
14 Mar 01:15 Orbital Trim Maneuver (OTM) 22
17 Mar 01:10 Turn for attitude maintenance
21 Mar 01:59 F&P Start Ganymede 7 real-time survey
30 Mar 16:00 End of data playback (Europa 6)
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